Of course death means a lot. The important thing is to know why. Self-sacrifice within the context of revolutionary action is an expression of the very highest understanding of life, and of the struggle to make life worthy of a human being.
– Ghassan Kanafani1
You may take the last strip of my land,/Feed my youth to prison cells./You may plunder my heritage./You may burn my books, my poems/Or feed my flesh to the dogs./You may spread a web of terror/On the roofs of my village,/O enemy of the sun,/But/I shall not compromise/And to the last pulse in my veins/I shall resist.
–Samih Al Qasim, “Enemy of the Sun”2
Turn plague and sadness against me/I remained defying/cut my wrist /with my bloody chest I defy/cut my leg/I mount the wound and walk/and with my violence I defy…/and kill me—I defy/I kill death /and come back to you a defying God/All what I own of my father’s and grandfather’s /inheritance is to defy!
–Samih Al Qasim, “I Defy”3
A living embodiment of Samih Al Qasim’s legendary poems of resistance, Hamas leader Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar emerged unbroken from prison captivity into the leadership of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, before his legendary martyrdom on October 16, 2024. Embodying not only the resistance poetry of Al Qasim, but that of Ho Chi Minh and his anti-colonial ‘Dragon’ born dialectically of colonial repression,4 Sinwar transformed the prison space into a university5 and transformed Hamas into a steadfast resistance movement capable of waging the present war of liberation against Zionist settler-colonial genocide and occupation, and the U.S-led Western imperial world order it serves.
In his martyrdom, Sinwar would further transform and transcend even Western colonial concepts of life and death themselves, to become an immortal martyr and heroic symbol of total resistance, enlivening along the way global resistance traditions that have long reimagined the meaning and significance of life and death in revolutionary struggle.6
Honoring Sinwar in a speech just two weeks after his assassination, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem would declare him an “icon of heroism and resistance for Palestine and the free world.” “Martyred in the confrontation” with the enemy, he would continue, Sinwar fought “until his last breath—strong, brave, faithful, upright, dignified, and free.”7
And indeed, Sinwar stayed defiant until his last breath and the final “pulse in his veins.” Sitting upright, dignified in his chair—itself a highly symbolic image8—holding an AK-47, grenades, and a richly symbolic Glock pistol, Sinwar achieved his wish of dying on the battlefield, free and defiant.9 Mortally wounded, his final act on earth would be to hurl a stick toward an Israeli drone before his building would be collapsed with a tank shell from the cowardly Zionist army that had broken contact at once in response to Sinwar’s resistance.10
The Zionist regime—whose murder of Sinwar was entirely a matter of chance—quickly sought to parade the image of Sinwar’s death as an image of victory in a genocidal war against civilians that has produced no military achievements to date. Sinwar’s martyrdom followed quickly on the heels of the assassinations of Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah and Ismael Haniyeh, representing a long pattern in the racist logics of colonialism that has arrogantly and falsely presumed the murder of leaders will lead to the collapse of movements. Criticizing such colonial policies of assassination mere days before the martyrdom of Sinwar, the Qassam Brigades spokesperson Abu Obeida would state that
The enemy’s joy at the assassination of our leaders…is an illusory and temporary joy. When were assassinations the end of the road for liberation and resistance movements? The history of our Palestinian and Arab revolutions is full of examples that prove otherwise…If assassinations were a victory, the resistance against the occupation would have ended with the assassination of Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam 90 years ago.11
And indeed, the illusion of victory sought via such assassinations demonstrate only the supreme colonial arrogance of the Zionist entity and U.S-led Western imperialism and cannot be considered genuine military achievements by any measure, much less harbingers of submission or the breaking of resistance. For the resistance of the colonized is, and has always been, beyond the comprehension of the colonizer, for whom the revolt of the enslaved had once been described as a ‘psychological disorder’12 or a resolute disregard for life and a determined death wish.13 The failure to recognize that “death does not annihilate the meanings of life,”14 that the revolutionary “sees his life and death as one piece,”15 and that there is a dialectical relationship between repression and resistance that ensures the sites of repression become the sites of higher, more determined resistance guarantee no victory for colonialism in the final analysis.
As we pass the one-year anniversary of Yahya Sinwar’s martyrdom, then, we seek to reflect on the immortal life of his thought that, no matter what is done to the physical body, cannot be so easily killed. To do so, this essay returns to his novel The Thorn and the Carnation—in which he narrates not only his own personal biography and political evolution but that of the Palestinian people and of Palestinian resistance—to glean what historic and political lessons are contained within it to guide our present phase of struggle, and to enliven the ideas and bodies colonialism believes it has killed.
“EVERYTHING IS REAL” | NOVEL AS COLLECTIVE MEMOIR
Written from within “the darkness of captivity in the occupation’s prisons” Yahya Sinwar’s novel, The Thorn and the Carnation, was meticulously copied by hand, hidden from “the eyes and tainted hands of the torturers” and smuggled “into the light” from the inside-prison to what could in truth only be called the outside-prison or the open-air prison existence that defines life under the boots of settler-colonial occupation.16
A novel in form only, the work is ultimately a memoir. Certainly, of the author as individual, but more than this, it is a memoir of the Palestinian people and of the Palestinian armed struggle for liberation from Zionist colonialism and US-led Western imperialism. The life of this collective and its dynamic resistance is personified through the semi-fictionalized family unit and the extended network of characters that weave between the page’s scenes—at times guerrilla- and stealth-like—to form the motion of the novel and embody the many faces and modes of the anti-colonial struggle over the final decades of the 20th century. In describing this collective autobiography, Sinwar would preface the work by stating that:
This is not my personal story, nor is it the story of any particular individual, although all its events are real…The only fiction in this work is its transformation into a novel revolving around specific characters, to fulfill the form and requirements of a novelistic work. Everything else is real; I have lived it, and much of it I have heard from the mouths of those who themselves, their families, and their neighbors have experienced it over decades on the beloved land of Palestine.17
Sinwar traces the political evolution of the Palestinian individual—primarily via the family of Ahmed, our central protagonist and narrator—alongside the general evolution of the Palestinian armed struggle writ large. In doing so, he successfully disintegrates the artificial and mystifying bourgeois boundaries between the personal and the political, the individual and society, poetically embodying a defiant flight from ideological, intellectual, or mental captivity and confinement, beyond and alongside resistance to physical captivity.
This dual but unified narrative—of both individual and collective transformation via the life of the liberation struggle—parallels the autobiographical work of one Leila Khaled before him. This prolific member of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—whose famous hijacking operations are the stuff of Palestinian and, indeed, global anti-colonial legend—would similarly trace her own personal political evolution in My People Shall Live alongside the parallel development of Palestinian national struggle.18 Where her book follows, principally, the individual and collective shifts from the Pan-Arab nationalism of Nasserism to the popular guerrilla struggle under Fatah and the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), before the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and PFLP, Sinwar’s narrative carries us from this same secular nationalist era of resistance through the rise of Islamic resistance, providing along the way an intimate study of the desecularization process, the Intifadas, the betrayals of the Oslo Accords, and other watershed moments of this period spanning from the 1960s through the early 2000s.
Secular-nationalist, leftist, and Islamic factions are personified through various members of Ahmed’s family and community. His brother Mahmoud represents the secular-nationalist perspectives of Fatah and the PLO, while the Marxist tradition of the PFLP is represented by the character of Abdel Hafiz among others. The true center of the novel and of Ahmed’s increased admiration, however, is his cousin Ibrahim, who—alongside Ahmed’s brother Hassan—represents Hamas and the Islamic path of resistance.
…everyone was aligning themselves with their groups and organizations, showing loyalty even if just through words and defending their positions. This immediately reflected within our home. My brother Mahmoud was a Fatah supporter, my brothers Hassan and Mohammed and my cousin Ibrahim, were from the Islamic bloc, and our neighbor and relative (Hassan’s brother-in-law) was from the Popular Front.19
Throughout the novel, fierce debates erupt within the family to mirror the larger debates and struggles between secular-nationalist, leftist, and Islamic resistance forces outside.
Abdel Hafix often visited our house, sitting with others in Mahmoud’s room to engage in intellectual discussions. Abdel Hafiz, a socialist Marxist, advocated for this ideology, discussing historical materialism (dialectic) and citing works by Marx, Lenin, or Engels…Mahmoud adopted a different viewpoint, arguing that our cause could not afford to be divided into different ideological currents. He believed everyone was free to choose their ideology, but our efforts should unite under the banner of the national liberation movement Fatah…20
Passages and chapters analyzing everyday life under occupation and specific episodes in the history of the struggle, are bookended by these scenes of Adbel Hafiz and Hassan or Mahmoud and Ibrahim arguing around the family’s dinner table late into the night. The nature of the struggle and its leadership are discussed, as is the role of difference factions, the meaning of martyrdom, the short- and long-range objectives and strategies, and the correct political line in response to the ever evolving conditions of the multifaceted battle against the occupation, its settlers, and the imperial world order of violence, dispossession, and exploitation they embody, defend, and uphold.
These conversations weave throughout the text, transitioning key historical turning points and unifying the world of theory with the world of practice as strategic debates are followed by scenes of historic resistance operations and vice versa, with each informing and enriching the other. The evolution of these discussions—and the family as whole—follows the evolution of the struggle, while demonstrating both the nature of colonial violence as a total violence that penetrates into the home and the most intimate spaces of the colonized, as well as the nature of anti-colonial resistance that moves dialectically against such repression to create an equally total resistance within not only the individual or the family cell but the society writ large.
While political and factional debate is front and center, there is nonetheless a clear narrative of continuity and unified struggle. The personified representatives of the PLO, PFLP, Hamas, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are quite literally positioned as within the same family and kinship network, while the contributions of each to the overall struggle are demonstrated unquestionably. The novel—which is ultimately sympathetic to the Islamic path of resistance—thus at no point fails to recognize the foundation which was built by the secular-nationalist era of resistance—indeed, Ibrahim would describe Mahmoud as “like a father to us all”21—nor shy away from secular-nationalist criticisms of the long pre-Intifada period during which the Islamic bloc took no “operational responsibility in the armed struggle against the occupation”22 and “[settled] for political and mass work instead…hindering [according to the secular-nationalists] the youth’s potential for resistance in the name of religion.”23
The novel, thus, in many ways affirms the idea that the desecularization process was less a rupture or departure from the secular-nationalist period, but rather a continuation of its most core principles—under new, religious trappings and signifiers, no doubt, but with the fundamental resistance praxis inherited intact, if not advanced—that Fatah and the PLO had abandoned and betrayed over time.24
Before and beyond the popular struggle, the novel maintains nuance in regard to Nasserism, too, and the Nasserist era of Arab unity led by the Arab states. Indeed, the author recognizes Nasser for his role as the one-time “leader of the Arab nation” and “a unifying figure for the Arab cause”25 in a gesture of respect that avoids the all too frequent dogmatic portrayal of Nasserism as mere repressive regime or one-dimensional failure.26 In this respect, the reader is once again reminded of Khaled’s work in which she too is able to maintain fierce political criticism of the Arab states while simultaneously recognizing Nasser as “one of the greatest Arab leaders of the modern era” a “giant among dwarfs” and “the first champion of anti-imperialism” in her world.27
Thus, while highlighting political evolution, difference, and disagreement, Sinwar manages to avoid the many pitfalls of dogmatic factionalism. Using criticism not to fragment resistance but to strengthen and advance the struggle, the work stresses unity and resistance above all, while affirming the theory that it is fidelity to the resistance cause—more so than any professed ideology—that has ultimately determined the face of resistance leadership over the many decades of struggle.28
Indeed, it is for this reason that Ahmed is not automatically nor immediately impressed with the Islamic bloc, finding the positions of Mahmoud and Abdel—representing Fatah and the PFLP respectively—to be much more convincing at first.
It was evident that Abdel Hafiz was stronger in his intellectual capabilities [than Hassan]. He would attack the religious thinking approach, claiming religion to be the opium of the masses and a numbing agent. ‘Where are the religious people, and what is their role in the national struggle and resistance against occupation?’ Hassan’s responses were weak, and he often clashed with Mahmoud in these discussions…Mahmoud responded strongly, affirming that there is no doubt or objection to religion, but we are in a phase of national liberation, and we must not be distracted by any ideological or religious disagreement, leaving Hassan speechless, unable to respond…I heard many of these incidents…Mahmoud’s discussions were more convincing to my mind, but Hassan’s kindness and simple approach to matters were more comforting and reassuring.29
And later,
Much of Hassan’s speech and dialogue appealed to me and resonated with my soul, but I did not understand his stance on several points. His weakness was apparent when they discussed the role of Islamists in bearing the national concern, their role in armed resistance against occupation, and their stance on martyrs who die for the nation. Also, their ambiguous stance towards the Palestine Liberation Organization was evident.30
A highly symbolic decision signals the real turning point in Ahmed’s evolution when Ibrahim—the true center of the novel as the personification of the Islamic resistance—makes the choice to stay in Gaza for his education at the same moment as the PLO in Lebanon is compelled to evacuate after the 1982 Israeli invasion—a watershed moment in the region, but particularly in the long desecularization process that saw Islamic resistance replace secular-nationalist resistance as the vanguard of the armed struggle.31 The juxtaposition of Ibrahim’s commitment to his people and refusal to abandon his territory—“[his] eyes welling up with tears, ‘God bless you, my aunt, but I don’t want to leave Gaza”32—that recalls Ghassan Kanafani’s famous “Letter from Gaza”33 contrasts starkly with the defeated PLO whose trajectory was moving toward compromise away from steadfast resistance. This decision to stay marks the beginning of Ahmed’s political shift and increased “respect and appreciation”34 for Ibrahim.
Ahmed’s political evolution as the novel progresses mirrors the evolution of the society. When the resistance was monopolized by secular-nationalist positions, Ahmed is more impressed with their thought and leadership. As their influence is challenged by an increasingly militant Islamist bloc, and as the secular-nationalist’s positions toward the occupation devolve into compromise and retreat, Ahmed’s loyalties and admiration shifts. This evolution signals not any fickle political malleability but rather an affirmation that it is above all steadfast fidelity to the resistance cause rather than espoused ideology that captures that loyalty of the people and ensures their support.
“BRING ME THE WEAPON” | REVOLUTIONARY REBIRTH & THE ECSTASY OF REVOLT
Beyond theoretical debates, then, it is this resistance that takes center stage in this martyred Hamas leader’s “novel of action.”35 The development of what Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem would call a “society of resistance”36 is unfurled before the reader in a striking, kaleidoscope portrait of ever varied and dynamic acts of Palestinian resistance to colonial occupation. Flashing images of one operation after another, each more bold, defiant, escalatory, and complex than the last carry the reader through the evolution of the struggle, climaxing cathartically in the explosive first and second Intifadas.
What begins as spontaneous mass protest develops before the reader into an improvised resistance of stones, knives, and Molotov cocktails before evolving ultimately into an organized and disciplined armed resistance.
The Intifada continued to escalate and spread during its first months to cover the entire occupied Palestinian territory, leaving no city, village, camp, or alley untouched…The phenomenon of massive protesting crowds began to fade, shifting to specific numbers in every alley, street, neighborhood, and village. They lit tires, set up barriers and barricades, and when the occupation forces arrived, they were met with stone-throwing, Molotov cocktails, and sulfur bombs…37
The intimate, penetrative nature of colonial violence in its totality is, early on, met dialectically with an anti-colonial counter-violence and counter-penetration in the form of endless varieties of individual knife operations that feature prominently and recurrently throughout the text. In one such instance, a guerrilla “sends a knife flashing towards one the occupiers, forward and backward in a single motion” before the “city’s alleys swallow him up, vanishing with its sleepy air, while the occupation forces and intelligence raise hell, making arrests and conducting investigations, all in vain.”38 The society of resistance that protects the guerrilla does not shrivel in fear from the arrests, curfews, or repression. Instead, the guerrillas become heroes39 and inspire a new fearlessness and will to revenge and higher and greater resistance.
During the curfew, a young man, not yet twenty, resolved to take revenge with the sharp edge of his knife…[he] found a man, pulled his knife, and stabbed him several times, leaving him dead…[he] was arrested with his head held high…[later] Another young man attacks several people sitting at a bus station with his knife, killing four. Another attacks students exiting their school with a hatchet, killing one and injuring many. These incidents multiply, and Israeli politicians and security officials start talking about a ‘Knife Intifada,’ creating a state of panic and terror in their streets.40
Such knife operations feature prominently both for their symbolic value as acts of intimate, dialectical counter-penetration against the psycho-sexual carnal terror of colonial violence, but also as a reflection of the obstacles facing a disarmed people in their desperate search for weapons as the sole means to their liberation.
…the territories were completed devoid of weapons; the occupation had methodically worked over nearly two and a half decades of its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank to empty the regions of weapons and ammunition and to seal all avenues through which they might be brought, imposing severe penalties on anyone involved in this trade. People didn’t even know how to use weapons if they found them. Therefore, activists resorted to using bladed weapons like knives, daggers, machetes, and swords, in addition to batons, and it was very rare to see an old Carlo Gustav rifle or pistol.41
A great majority of novel’s clandestine work and military operations are thus centered on the acquisition of arms.42 The pursuit of weapons, though, is not limited to mere expropriation, but extended to include local manufacture. At first, this would mean only simple, home-made devices: “The lack of safe, conventional weapons in the occupied territories led to the innovation of preparing simple explosive devices from readily available basic materials”43 Later, however, and especially with the introduction of a “chemistry student” named “Yahya” whose eyes would project a “raging storm” beneath a “calm and [still]”44 demeanor, we see a much more complete development of increasingly potent homemade weapons, explosives, and even rockets. The development of which are tied to the life of the people and their steadfast resistance:
Work, beloved ones, work, for this is a jihad… victory or martyrdom. We must make weapons, however simple, and strive to improve them every day to increase their destructive power and range, and strike the enemy who possess all those military capabilities. Despite the simplicity of our weapons and our limited means, with God’s help, we will create a new equation in the conflict, establishing a balance of terror and deterrence. They bombard us, so we bombard them. May God be pleased with Umar Ibn Al-Khattab, who said: “By God, if I found nothing but dust, I would fight them with it.” And we, thank God have much more than dust. We must fight them with everything we possess and always strive to enhance our capabilities. We are just beginning this battle…45
The spontaneous will of the masses is organized slowly, and through disciplined cells built predominantly around family and kinship networks—“their small family now [resembled] an army”46—into an organized and armed resistance that develops sophisticated weaponry alongside increasingly potent, dramatic, and escalatory guerrilla tactics and qualitative operations.
Politics of fear and defeatism are transformed as a veritable Fanonian ecstasy bursts from the pages and the collective catharsis of revolt gives birth to new individuals and a new society.47 Describing in his opus, The Wretched of the Earth, this process of revolutionary rebirth through acts of counter-violence, this legendary theoretician of anti-colonial revolutionary praxis, Frantz Fanon, would write that, through acts of resistance and the shattering of colonial prestige,48 “the native discovers that his life, his breath, his beating heart are the same as those of the settler.” 49
…He finds out that the settler's skin is not of any more value than a native's skin; and it must be said that this discovery shakes the world in a very necessary manner [emphasis mine]. All the new, revolutionary assurance of the native stems from it. For if, in fact, my life is worth as much as the settler's, his glance no longer shrivels me up nor freezes me, and his voice no longer turns me into stone. I am no longer on tenterhooks in his presence; in fact, I don't give a damn for him. Not only does his presence no longer trouble me, but I am already preparing such efficient ambushes for him that soon there will be no way out but that of flight.50
The Intifada—or, shaking off of colonial occupation—stimulates this process in Sinwar’s novel. In one passage, a young man is described as being awoken by his father, who once shriveled and froze before occupation, but now calls upon his son to join the Intifada and the ambushes of the resistance:
The young man, leaning on his elbow, look at his father, puzzled, and rubbed his eyes, wondering to himself who woke him up to participate in the demonstrations and clashes…My father? My father, who just days ago would tremble with fear upon hearing of any events against the occupation, would lock us in and prevent us from going out! What has happened in this world to cause such a drastic change?51
Discovering that the “settler’s skin is not of any more value” indeed shakes this world drastically and the “morale of the masses [soars] as they [see] the myth of the Israeli army shattered by the raging Palestinian stones of anger. Stories of confrontations, martyrs, wounded, and heroics flew to every home and household, igniting in the youth and boys the spirit of sacrifice and martyrdom.”52 A new revolutionary fearlessness of the “Drowned, [who] Fear Not the Drowning” moves the spontaneous rebellion into an organized “constant state of resistance” and a “collective automatic motion” that becomes the “main focus of Palestinian life, with all other aspects, including education, work, and health, adapting to support this central goal until the occupation is defeated.”53 Thusly, resistance becomes life and the very oxygen of the people in struggle, and life itself becomes resistance as with “each passing week, the uprising extends to new areas…[transforming] into a lifestyle, becoming the backbone of the daily Palestinian pattern.”54 “This narrative” of the evolving resistance, summarizes Sinwar,
…captures the ingenuity, resilience, and defiance of the Palestinian people amidst the escalating tensions and their unyielding spirit against the occupation forces, blending individual acts of resistance into the collective struggle for freedom.55
This collective rebirth is mirrored in Ahmed’s family, too. Perhaps most importantly through the transformation of the mother, who’s evolution in many ways constitutes the very heart of the novel. In one pivotal scene, the mother of Ahmed finds a pistol hidden in her nephew Ibrahim’s room. The discovery becomes a turning point as things long unspoken are openly declared between them at last.
Ibrahim smiled and said, “Auntie, it seems I must now say what I have tried for years not to say…I chose my path not today, but years ago…I chose the path of jihad and resistance and have walked it and will continue to walk it. Nothing will stop me…I have chosen my path and I will not abandon it.56
To which the mother at last understands what she long resisted and “fighting back her tears” she returns “his pistol wrapped in a cloth.”57 Her transformation is later signified through the songs she sings while cradling Ibrahim’s infant daughter, Israa:
She often cradled Israa in her arms…[and] frequently sang a refrain that went, “Bring my handkerchief, you who stand by the door…bring my handkerchief, so I can return to my homeland, you who stand by the door…” …However, after a particular incident with Ibrahim, she changed the word “handkerchief” in her song to “gunpowder,” and it became her constant refrain: “Bring the gunpowder, you who stand by the door… Bring the gunpowder to liberate my country, you who stand by the door…to honor my loved ones, you standing at the door… to honor my loved ones.” I loved these chants sung by my mother, and felt they breathed through our hopes and dreams.58
Later, with the martyrdom of the heroic guerrilla Emad Hussein Aql59—a powerful character in the novel who is described as a living “symbol of jihad and resistance whose name had become well-known across Palestine”60—the mother’s voice strengthens the family and enables their resistance, as Ibrahim’s wife, Mariam, embodies the song and delivers to Ibrahim a weapon to avenge Emad.
I then remembered my mother…chanting, “Bring me my scarf, you who stand at the door… Bring me my weapon.”…I realized how deeply those words, which we absorbed with our mothers’ milk, were ingrained in our souls, blending into our blood. Remembering this as I saw Mariam…wipe away her tears as she parted with the man of her dreams, the father of her children. She handed him the weapon, her eyes steady, her eyes clear of any hesitation, fear, or calculation. It confirmed to me then that we are a strong and mighty people who cannot be broken or pushed back, that a mysterious force flows through our being, instilling in us a strange readiness to sacrifice everything dear to us. My mother’s voice echoed in my ears, “Bring me my weapon, you who stand at the door…Bring me my weapon, never shall I rest, my heart’s delight… Never shall I rest, until I carry my weapon, kill my murderer, and achieve success with my blood and fire… Bring me my weapon, bring me my weapon, you who stand at the door… Bring me my weapon.”61
The colonial effort to break the spirit of the people, to violate the most intimate spaces of the family, are thus backfired, as the family itself becomes a steadfast revolutionary cell, embodying a praxis of sumud that refuses to cooperate, confess, break, or recognize colonial power.62 In this way, the family affirms Fanon’s famous observation in A Dying Colonialism that the “family emerges strengthened from this ordeal in which colonialism has resorted to every means to break the people’s will.”63
Indeed, the evolution of the family in The Thorn and the Carnation mirrors the transformation of the Algerian family, famously documented by Fanon in A Dying Colonialism. In his chapter on “The Algerian Family” Fanon describes this process of revolutionary rebirth through which each member of the family in turn, is transformed alongside the development of the national struggle. The “woman-for-marriage” is famously replaced by the “woman-for-action,” the “young girl” by the “militant,” and the new “militant couple” evolves into the “basic cell of the commonwealth, the fertile nucleus of the nation.”64 The family, he writes, “frees itself of everything that proves unnecessary and detrimental to the revolutionary situation.” 65 A society of resistance is born, through which all the old values of the colonial world are shattered. “The person is born, assumes his autonomy, and becomes a creator of his own values. The old stultifying attachments to the father [as representative of old values and social formations] melts in the sun of the revolution.”66 This occurs because:
The colonized society perceived that in order to succeed in the gigantic undertaking into which it had flung itself, in order to defeat colonialism and in order to build the Algerian nation, it would have to make a vast effort of self-preparation, strain all its joints, renew its blood and its soul. In the course of the multiple episodes of war, the people came to realize that if they wished to bring a new world to birth, they would have to create a new Algerian society from top to bottom.67
“THE RESISTANCE IS ENOUGH”
And it is this process of revolutionary rebirth—at the level of the individual, the family, and the society writ large—that Sinwar masterfully narrates for us in The Thorn and the Carnation. Against seemingly insurmountable odds and the obstacles of defeat, disarmament, infiltration, collaboration, and betrayal, Sinwar narrates the development of a collective resistance personality that has passed the point of no return and ensured “no way out” for the colonizer, but “that of a fight”68
He narrates the “vast effort of self-preparation” required to bring this new world to birth and in doing so, declares unequivocally, that we do not need concessions or compromise, collusion nor cooperation to achieve victory, but that “the Intifada and resistance are enough.”69 It is a story of joint-straining, blood and soul renewal, and the long dialectic between colonial repression and an anti-colonial resistance that is steadfast, dynamic, and—in spite of many setbacks—incapable of breaking before this great enemy of the sun with whom we must continue to resist, until the last pulse in our veins.
ENDNOTES
1 Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun & Other Palestinian Stories (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), 15.
2 Naseer Aruri and Edmund Ghareeb, eds., Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2025), 86
3 Ibid., 123.
4 “People who come out of prison can build up the country/Misfortune is a test of people’s fidelity./Those who protest at injustice are people of true merit./When the prison-doors are opened, the real dragon/will fly out.” Ho Chi Minh, “Word - Play” in Prison Diary, (Berkeley, CA: Real Dragon Press, 1971), 21 – 22.
5 “They wanted the prison to be a grave for us… But with our belief in our cause, we turned the prison into sanctuaries of worship and academies for study.”
6 See Laleh Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), chapter two especially, and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), chapter five especially.
7 Resistance News Network (Telegram), “Secretary General of Hezbollah, Sheikh Naim Qassem in his speech today, October 30th 2024 (1/2),” October 30, 2024, https://t.me/PalestineResist/65743.
8 See Red. (@redstreamnet), “Yahya Sinwar’s most iconic image? This picture from 2021 captures the leader in his armchair, smiling amidst the rubble of his home after Israel bombed it. Many across Gaza mimicked the “Sinwar Pose” over the last year as a statement of defiance in the face of destruction,” October 18, 2024, https://x.com/redstreamnet/status/1847281752785457468.
9 See Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah), “‘The greatest gift the enemy can give me is to assassinate me. I submit myself to martyrdom for God at his hands. I'm 59 years old, and I much prefer to be martyred by an F-16 or by rockets, than die of corona or a heart attack...I prefer to die a martyr’ -Yahya Sinwar in 2021,” Twitter, October 17, 2024. https://x.com/AliAbunimah/status/1847039777977094605.
10 The Electronic Intifada, “Yahya Sinwar’s life and final battle, with Jon Elmer,” YouTube video, 37:39, October 24, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRLgQ8EyK-8&t=12s.
11 Resistance News Network (Telegram), “Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida during his speech on the one year anniversary of Al-Aqsa Flood, October 7th, 2024 (2/4),” October 7, 2024, https://t.me/RNN_Backup/60762.
12 Drapetomania –the racist and fictious ‘disorder’ that claimed any enslaved African who sought to revolt against or escape from racial slavery was insane, and suffering from mental illness. Seeking to justify slavery, this false science claimed the desire for freedom was unnatural and irrational and that those who resisted were suffering from madness.
13 See Vincent Harding, There is a River: The Black Freedom Struggle in America, (New York: Vintage Books, 1983),17 – 19; Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1973), 5.
14 Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 117.
15 Newton, 7.
16 Yahya Al-Sinwar, The Thorn and the Carnation, (TASQ Company, 2024), vi. [A note on citations for this text: This essay cites the 2024 TASQ combined edition of The Thorn and the Carnation, which translates and integrates Parts I and II into a single volume. This particular edition, however, lacks internal pagination. For precision in citation, I have thus manually written in and applied a consistent pagination system of my own. The front matter (cover, publications details, preface, etc.) is numbered with Roman numbers (i-vii). The core text is then numbered continuously from 1 to 393. The pagination continues sequentially through the transition between Part I and Part II, ensuring a single, uninterrupted numerical sequence, with the core text of Part I ending on page 175, the front matter of Part II proceeding from page 176 – 180, core text of Part II beginning on page 181, and the entire text concluding on page 393. To aid readers who do not wish to do the manual numbering, or who read online or from a different edition, I have also included chapter numbers in parentheses after the exact citation.]
17 Ibid., vii. (See Author’s Preface)
18 Leila Khaled, My People Shall Live (Toronto: NC Press LTD., 1975). Leila Khaled’s work is called to mind in this regard, no doubt, but it is certainly not the only text of this sort, to be clear. Indeed, we could just as easily cite Assata Shakur or any number of revolutionaries from around the globe whose poetic memoirs read as collective memoirs of movements and intergenerational narratives of long struggle, repression and resistance, outside of and against the individualistic bourgeois narrative/autobiographical form. While Leila and Assata are today both commodified as individualized icons, their actual works and living political praxes reveal a world filled with many Leila’s and many Assata’s whose contributions and sacrifices in long and on-going traditions of resistance can never be confined by such shallow and politically stunted appropriation. And for this, I am immensely grateful.
19 Al-Sinwar, 152. (See Chapter Sixteen)
20 Ibid., 93. (See Chapter Eleven). For more on the “anti-ideology” position of Fatah/the PLO see Helena Cobban, The Palestinian Liberation Organization: People, Power and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 198.
21 Ibid., 305. (See Chapter Twenty-Five)
22 Al-Sinwar, 108. (See Chapter Twelve)
23 Ibid., 147. (See Chapter Fifteen)
24 See Erike Skare, A History of Palestinian Islamic Jihad: Faith, Awareness, and Revolution in the Middle East, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). See also our latest podcast: Jonathan Turner, “Resistance Report Episode Nine: The Palestinian Armed Struggle, Israel, and the Rise of Hezbollah,” Al Fida’i Media Network (podcast), Spotify, August 9, 2025, https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ezOsSdbLDWlQKlTwQpiYb?si=rBUQ5lkQQcyV7hdaKawf7Q.
25 Al-Sinwar, 69, 71. (See Chapter Nine)
26 Among others, Aziz Tamimi’s work comes to mind here. While producing an otherwise excellent history of Hamas, Tamimi’s work on the group consistently described Nasser’s Egypt as an “oppressive regime” and virtually nothing more due to its repression of the Muslim Brotherhood. We, of course, do not deny the repression of the Brotherhood, nor the Communist Party or many others under Nasser, but we nonetheless prefer a more nuanced analysis of Nasserism and its significance in this period. See Azzam Tamimi, Hamas: A History from Within (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2007)
27 Khaled, 210.
28 See Skare, 227.
29 Al-Sinwar, 94 – 96. (See Chapter Eleven)
30 Ibid., 108. (See Chapter Twelve)
31 See Turner, “Resistance Report Episode Nine.”
32 Al-Sinwar, 126. (See Chapter Fourteen)
33 “No, I’ll stay here, and I won’t ever leave…I won’t come to you. But you, return to us!...Come back, my friend! We are all waiting for you.” Ghassan Kanafani, “Letter from Gaza,” in Men in the Sun & Other Palestinian Stories, 111–115.
34 Al-Sinwar, 130. (See Chapter Fourteen)
35 Justin Podur, “A Resistance View of the Long War,” The Anti-Empire Project, August 29, 2024. https://justinpodur.substack.com/p/a-resistance-view-of-the-long-war.
36 Martyr Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah’s successor as Secretary General of Hezbollah, Sheikh Naim Qassem, would famously state in 2007 that Hezbollah sought not to be merely a resistance group, isolated from the masses, but to create a culture and “society of resistance” such that there would no distinction between the population and the guerrilla, and that steadfast resistance in all its many complex and varied forms would be weaved into the very fabric of the community. See Nicholas Blanford, Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel (New York: Random House, 2011), 79—83.
37 Al-Sinwar, 234. (See Chapter Twenty-One)
38 Ibid., 197. (See Chapter Nineteen)
39 The character of Emad is particularly notable here. Described as a living “symbol of jihad and resistance whose name had become well-known across Palestine” (Al-Sinwar, 274. See Chapter Twenty-Three) he is protected and beloved by the community. When seeking temporary refuge and sheltered by a sympathetic family, the elder patriarch of the family recognizes Emad by the look in his eyes (a recurrent symbol and theme in the book) as the “hero they speak of, who possesses seven lives and has bewildered the occupiers” (Ibid., 276.) The elder tells Emad, “you are dearer to me than anything in the world…Everyone has heard of your bravery. May Allah protect you and your brothers’ hands. Take your ease, heroes. Take your ease.” (Ibid.) As the occupation forces approach in their search for Emad, he seeks to flee and not risk the family’s safety. The Elder replies “Are the children and buildings more precious than you? No, by Allah, you will not leave this place. If it turns out they are on their way here, each of you should ascend to one of my sons’ four buildings, fortify yourselves within, and do not surrender” (Ibid., 277).
40 Ibid., 260. (See Chapter Twenty-Two)
41 Ibid., 254. (See Chapter Twenty-Two)
42 References to the search for, and manufacture of, arms as well as the seizure of weaponry at every opportunity, whether the intended outcome of an operation or action or not, can be found throughout the text. Some examples can be found on 250, 254, 256, 260–264, 270, 274, 281, 310, 311, 365, 384, 387, 388, among other locations.
43 Ibid., 223. (See Chapter Twenty)
44 This “Yahya” would, of course, be none other than Yahya Ayyash. Ibid., 278. (See Chapter Twenty-Three)
45 Ibid., 385. (See Chapter Thirty)
46 Ibid., 220. (See Chapter Twenty)
47 For our latest on Fanon, see Jonathan Turner, "100 Years of Fanon: Reclaiming a Living Fanon for Gaza," Al-Fida’i Media Network, August 31, 2025, https://www.fidaimedia.org/story/100-years-of-fanon.
48 “Prestige stands between the masses and a revolt” writes another “Dragon”—the martyred Black Panther Field Marshall and Political Prisoner George L. Jackson—in the pages of his Blood in My Eye, a revolutionary text that, like Sinwar’s, was written and smuggled out of prison mere days before his assassination. “The aura of magic, glamour, luster and splendid permanence covers the fascists like a protective layer of fat…Prestige bars any serious attack on power. Do people attack a thing they consider with awe, with a sense of legitimacy?...Prestige dies when it cannot prevent further attacks upon itself…[and] prestige must be destroyed. People must see the venerated institutions and the ‘omnipotent administrator’ actually under physical attack. They must be assured that the heavens will not hurl lightning bolts at the people’s heads for challenging the rights of property.” George Jackson, Blood in My Eye, (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), 40–43. See also, Greg Thomas, "Dragons!: George Jackson in the Cinema with Haile Gerima—from the Watts Films to Teza," Black Camera 4, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 56, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/blackcamera.4.2.55.
49 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1968), 45.
50 Ibid.
51 Al-Sinwar, 216. (See Chapter Twenty)
52 Ibid., 218. (See Chapter Twenty)
53 Ibid., 219–221, 226. (See Chapter Twenty)
54 Ibid., 225 (See Chapter Twenty)
55 Ibid., 222. (See Chapter Twenty)
56 Ibid., 255–256. (See Chapter Twenty-Two)
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid., 265 (See Chapter Twenty-Three)
59 Ibid., 319–320. (See Chapter Twenty-Six)
60 Ibid., 274. (See Chapter Twenty-Three, and endnote 24 above)
61 Ibid., 231. (See Chapter Twenty-Six). The references to the blood, the eyes, etc. here and elsewhere throughout the text are not insignificant. As is always the case, issues of time and scope prevent exhaustive analysis, but entire essays could be written on the politics of the body in revolt in The Thorn and The Carnation. Fanonian ideas of the ecstasy of revolt indeed find constant expression in this novel, perhaps most notably in the endless reference to militant smiles. There is hardly a guerrilla operation that is not immediately proceeded or followed by some reference to a militant’s “smile.” See, for instance, 171, 196, 204, 210, 216, 222, 255, 267, 270, 276, 278, 282, 283, 288, 293, 296, 311, 312, 348, 349, 381, 384, 385, 388, among many other locations.
62 Steadfastness” is the rough translation of the Palestinian concept of Sumud—a political act of resistance that can be approximated as a determined refusal to “break”, cooperate, or “confess” in the face of colonial violence. See Lena Meari, "Sumud: A Palestinian Philosophy of Confrontation in Colonial Prisons," South Atlantic Quarterly 113, no. 3 (July 2014): 547–578, https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-2692182. See also, Malu Halasa and Jordan Elgrably, eds., Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2025).
63 Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism (New York: Grove Press, 1965) trans. Haakon Chevalier, 116.
64 Ibid., 108–114.
65 Ibid., 101.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid.
68 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 45.
69 Al-Sinwar, 337, 344, (See Chapter Twenty Seven) 349, 350 (See Chapter Twenty-Eight)
